


Glaring Downpour of the November Chill

by lookoutlovers22



Series: Six Months [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fighting in the Rain, POV Tom Riddle, Sane Tom Riddle, The Golden Trio Era (Harry Potter), Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, angst just angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookoutlovers22/pseuds/lookoutlovers22
Summary: Tom blinked, waking up in the gentle daze of the morning. His side was sore, arms stretching out to find a cold space beside him. Checking the clock, eight in the morning.He wonders where it all went wrong. He wonders how it came to this – how everything resulted into this culmination of what-ifs and should-have-done-thats. And he wonders if he could have changed something to make it all better. Wonders if one morning, he would stop searching for a lilting warmth in the mornings. Wonders if one day he will wake up and remember that warmth had left him for the Italian countryside.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle
Series: Six Months [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061789
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Glaring Downpour of the November Chill

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, NOT proofread because I am a brave brave soul.
> 
> Not Canon compliant, like... at all.
> 
> JK Rowling owns these characters (unfortunately) but that doesn't mean I have to like her.

Tom blinked, waking up in the gentle daze of the morning. His side was sore, arms stretching out to find a cold space beside him. Checking the clock, eight in the morning.

He wonders where it all went wrong. He wonders how it came to this – how everything resulted into this culmination of what-ifs and should-have-done-thats. And he wonders if he could have changed something to make it all better. Wonders if one morning, he would stop searching for a lilting warmth in the mornings. Wonders if one day he will wake up and remember that warmth had left him for the Italian countryside.

But he wouldn’t think about her – he would not should not could not think about her.

And so he got up and washed his teeth and remembered a time when his flat had two toothbrushes instead of one. He walked out to the living room and remembered when she would light the fireplace. He hasn’t lighted it since she left, and as the days slipped away, the coldness of their apartment seeped into his bones, not a trace of her left. He could live like this, and as the days go on he would forget all of the times when she would be there and she would smile at him and glorious light would fill the room and he would should could do it.

He didn’t drink coffee in the morning, but she did, and the one thing she left with him was her coffee maker and the jar of roast beans in the cupboard. He keeps it under a stasis charm, thinking that she would come back and take it because surely she wouldn’t waste it like that. But as the months stretched on, his hope of her coming back dwindled. Hope is so easily lost, and Tom did not like losing things. So he did not hope.

He poured a cup of boiling water into his tea, drank it over brewed without sugar, and threw the tea bag down the bin. Cleaned the mug, and put it back in the cupboard, like she always used to tell him to. Took a shower, and thought of her. Stopped thinking about her because he would not should not could not, and put on his coat, cleaned his face, looked at the bags under his eyes on the mirror and glamoured it until the traces of her disappeared. Fixed his hair, occluded until he forgot her name, and walked out the door.

It had been six months. She would not be coming back.

That day he went to a little bookstore nestled between a flower shop and an apothecary, and bought three books. He glazed over the new editions of _Hogwarts, A History_ and wondered if there was a world where he would not have to bear the constant reminders of her. He put them inside his messenger bag, with the undetectable extension charm that he allowed her to teach him how to cast in fourth year. He occluded until he forgot she existed.

He gripped the strap of his bag and walked down the street to the Weasley twins’ shop, and looked at the assortment of trinkets and prank boxes and wheezes, and the two wizards behind the counter, identical smirks on their faces. He turned the corner and walked towards the little grocery shop he started frequenting since she went away.

Took out a basket, put in his groceries, walked over to the cashier. Inhaled, exhaled, felt pinpricks in the back of his neck. Someone was staring, nothing he wasn’t unused to. Everyone stared at him, just out of principle. He was pale, he knew, the contrast between his hair and his skin startling. Cheekbones a little bit too sharp, tall, broad-shouldered, whatever Witch Weekly was saying about him now.

He gave the cashier the money, and turned around to glare at whoever was watching him and—

His breath caught.

It was _her_ , and she was _here_.

Knew it was her by the shape of her eyes, her mouth, her nose – and he remembered all the moments he tried to hide away, deep in the alcoves and recesses and dips and groves in the towers of his mind. He remembered the way he stared at her before she left, trying to remember her in excruciating detail before she went away. He knew, or thought, it would be the last time he would see her. But she was _here_ , right now, in this moment with him, and he was dizzy with the sight of her.

“Hermione…” he said, remembering the way she walked down the halls at Hogwarts, hair bouncing all over the place and smiling and laughing at him, with him. Reading at the library, taking furious notes in Herbology class. Remembered the way her hair shined when the light hit her face, furious, fantastic light, stealing his breath from under him, throwing him back to 1998 before all of this happened. Throwing him back to six months ago, when the light from the windows hit her face, and he memorized the precise color of her eyes before she walked away from him, one foot up a step on the train door and the other on the platform, and he wondered if she ever thought of staying with him in those tiny moments.

When she had packed up her things and told him ‘I just need some time’ and him knowing that some time meant she was never coming back. That she was leaving him for her little cottage and running away from her problems, when the Italian countryside seemed more appealing than being with him. When he went back home and sat on the couch and let a tear slip out, and then on tear became two, and then four, and then a thousand little words unsaid. And he wondered if he could have begged her to stay. If now he could—and would he be reduced to that? Would he beg her to stay?

Would she stay?

He paid for his stuff and took his bags and waited for her outside. It was raining – and how fitting, that when he met her again his brightest day would turn into a wet pavement wonderland. And he wondered if they could mend what was left of them, salvaged it until it turned into something worth it all. Wondered if she thought that he was worth it all, still, the way he would still let the entire world collapse if he got to keep her. If there was someone else, if she had met someone else who she wanted more than whatever he could ever give her.

And he didn’t think about the books still lining the hallway to the kitchen, about coffee jar under the stasis charm in the cupboard in the kitchen, and in the way his soul still burned with the need to be with her, always with the need to be with her.

She stepped into the rain next to him, and he tried his best not to break down.

He refused to look at her.

“You didn’t tell me you were in town.” He said softly, voice scratchy in his throat. “Some warning,” he cleared his throat. “Some warning would have been nice.”

He could feel the way her magic rippled through the air, and dazedly thought, _there she is_. “Warning?” She let out in a disbelieving voice, strained and high pitched. It cut through the torrential rainfall like a sharp knife.

He let out a slow breath, trying to calm down. “You know what I mean.” He looked at her, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Her nose was red from the cold, and her eyes were shining with fire. He felt it like a dagger to the chest. “You —“

“I only came here for the wedding.” She replied to the floor, rushed out. A miniscule silence, a hesitation, but then she looked up at him and he wished he had never met her. “I didn’t plan to—to see you.”

She looked back down just as his heart clogged in his throat. And wouldn’t it be so much easier if he felt nothing at all? If he didn’t have to go outside today and if he could have just avoided this entire confrontation because the Wizarding World was so dreadfully small. If Lavender Brown and Ronald Weasley could have just had their wedding outside of the country so he wouldn’t have to face his doomed culmination of what-ifs and what-should-have-happened in the glaring downpour of the November chill.

His face changed into an expression of cold anger, imperceptibly crinkled at the edges of his eyes in an expression of pain. He barked out a harsh laugh, eyes closing so he wouldn’t have to see her. He wished he could leave her here, he wished he could leave her, end of. But it was one of the things he would not could not should not do, and she was his only weakness.

“Of course you didn’t.” He barked out angrily, like a sob was ripped from the very bottom of his endless supply of pain. “I wasn’t expecting you to come back, was I?”

She flinched, looking to the side, anywhere but him. And he felt it like a blow to the stomach, and thought about how she was the only mistake he’s ever made in his entire life. He felt the loss of her like his soul was being sucked out of body, arms numb once the weight of her was gone.

He shook his head. “This is stupid.” And it wasn’t elegant, and it wasn’t eloquent, and he intended to leave after it. But he remained firmly on the ground, unable to move, helplessly longingly vying to be beside her forever. Even if they were doomed from the start.

“I don’t think it is.” She said softly, looking up at him again. “I don’t think so.”

He exhaled, hunched his shoulders, straightened back up. “You left.” _You left me._ “You left.”

_You left me with the ground wide open at my feet. You knew exactly what you were doing to me._

Her face contorted in an expression of rage, magic swirling around her until he felt like he couldn’t breathe from the pressure of it. “Don’t pretend like you couldn’t have stopped me.” She said angrily. _What difference would it have made when you were so intent on leaving me?_ “Don’t pretend like—like you couldn’t have stopped me from leaving after that _stupid_ fucking fight—“ and he felt that like a slap to the face. How dare she? “—like—like you couldn’t have done so many things like—“

“Why is it always my fault?” And it was torn out from him in a pained scream. He could barely recognize the way he sounded. “It wasn’t all my fault, Hermione—“ she flinched again, only making him angrier. “—and you _knew_ it. You could have stayed and talked with me and you could have—could have stayed”

Her tears were streaming down her face, gone along with the rain, but he could feel her sadness and he could hear her choked inhales. Tom had forgotten to put his groceries in his bag, and it was digging on his hands, the cold wind biting. The street was empty, and they were fighting in the rain, and his head was stuck in a mantra of _it’s her it’s her it’s her_ and he wished he could drown in it.

“I don’t— I can’t—“ His head was spinning, teeth getting, eyes blistering with the effort of just looking at her. “Tom…”

And he needed her to know, that still, after six months of living in their halls and their room and their shelves and maintaining the stasis charm on the coffee jar in the cupboard in the kitchen. He wanted her to know.

“You could have stayed and we could have talked about it—it was just a little thing, that turned into a big thing that ruined _everything_ , it ruined _everything_. And I love you—“ He bit his lips so hard he tasted blood, heart pounding in his chest. Hermione shuddered under his gaze, shivering from the rain. The rain was starting to soak through their water repelling charms, and he felt the wait of it like a blanket. “I love you. I still love you, I don’t want to love you, I just—“

Heaving, looking like she was about to break down and start crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

“I have loved you since we were eleven—“ And he wanted to shut up—shut up and stop fucking this up and she was already crying and she was never going to come back now, wasn’t she. So what was _the point_. “—I will love you until after I die because loving you is so irrevocably tied to my being, every fiber of my soul and every fucking ounce of me is so tied to you—do you understand?” And she shook her head and Tom could feel his soul splintering with the murder of their love “And I can deal with you, any part of you, all parts of you if you would just—talk to me!”

The Earth thundered from up above, and his grocery bags fell on the cold pebbled path.

“You can’t just say things like that Tom, not after.” She bit back a sob. “Not after you—you told me those things, not after I told you that—that—“

 _And I know what I said and I will apologize a million times and I will take them all back because I did not mean a single word I said_ , and he wanted to say it to her and he _wished_ he could say it to her but he _could not_.

“Stay with me.” And the words were out of his mouth before he could think about it. He put his cold hands on her drenched face, and brushed a tear away from her. And he felt it like a pull to the bones, forever stuck in her orbit. “We can—we can work it out, and we can be together if you would just _stay with me_ , please, please, please stay.”

“How would we—we _can’t_ work it out, Tom. We _can’t_.”

Tom shook his head frantically, hair whipping out from side to side. “We can, we _can_ , if there’s any two people who could solve a problem it would—it would be the two of us, Hermione, it would be us.” Hermione was shaking her head, and Tom brought their foreheads together, shaking like a leaf in the rain.

“I love you.” She choked out. “But we—how could we? How?”

A fissure into the crack in his soul, and he laughed out loud, “We can start with coffee, and maybe we can go down to the—the bookstore we always used to go to, and I could—I could buy you the new _Hogwarts: A History_ —“ Hermione laughed helplessly. “We could do it. Please give me a chance.”

“You _hate_ coffee.” She whispered. “Hate it more than you hate Ronald Weasley.”

“I love you.” The ground shook, the sky clapped with brilliant white light.

“You owe me a drying charm and coffee, Tom Riddle.”

A fissure in his soul, wedged apart by her, as he broke apart beautifully for her in all the right ways.


End file.
